Cassopolis resident unhappy with police accident report

-She says officer blamed her, but she was standing still when hit by SUV.

-She says officer blamed her, but she was standing still when hit by SUV.

November 11, 2005

Katrinka Bell insists that her car was stopped at a stop sign when an SUV hit her at a Mishawaka shopping center. A police report of the accident, however, placed her at fault. She has been arguing for weeks now to persuade the Mishawaka Police Department to change its report of the collision. Police Chief Kenneth Witkowski says he sees no need to change the report. He said the investigating officer is standing by his account of the collision, and Witkowski is standing by the officer. Bell, a Cassopolis resident, was leaving University Park Mall at the time of the accident, which happened Aug. 5. She was waiting to turn right onto Grape Road from the driveway near the J.C. Penney store. The driveway has two right-turn lanes. Bell said she was in the righthand lane waiting for traffic to clear when a red sport utility vehicle in the lefthand lane cut in front of her. Bell said the passenger side of the SUV struck the front corner of her car on the driver's side. The other driver, an Osceola resident, was very apologetic, Bell said. Cpl. Wesley Thompson from the Mishawaka Police Department arrived to investigate. He did not respond to a telephone message asking for his side of the story. Neither did the other driver. Bell said Thompson talked mostly to the other driver about what happened. He "didn't even ask me my side of the story," she said. A couple of days later, Bell went to the Mishawaka police station to pick up a copy of the accident report. She said she was shocked to find that the officer had placed the blame on her for the accident. She again insisted the other car had hit her. "I was just getting ready to move. I had not moved yet," Bell said. "She came into my lane and cut in front of me." She added, "I would have told the officer that if he had asked." Witkowski said Thompson told him Bell was being very loud and yelled her version of events at him. Bell found discrepancies in the written report. For example, the officer said both cars had been turning left, when the driveway allows only right turns. Also, he had the license years wrong for both vehicles. He listed Bell as having a 2005 license when she had a 2006 plate. He listed the other driver as having a 2004 plate, when she had a 2005 plate. And the two vehicles were not sitting as he showed in the diagram he drew of the accident, she said. It shows that both vehicles had entered Grape Road, while Bell said they both remained in the driveway. The accident report, in fact, says the collision occurred on private property, in the parking lot. Witkowski said accident reports always note that they are not drawn to scale. And because vehicles bounce around in an accident, they often move from the point of impact. As a result, he said, the placement of the vehicles in the diagram may have been off slightly. Bell said she returned to the police station the next day to talk to the officer, and he made some corrections in the report. He added a statement saying, "Mrs. Bell now disputes her original statement and now states that she was not moving at the time of the crash. The crash scene appeared as both vehicles were turning when the crash happened." Part of the issue with placing fault, of course, is that it determines whose insurance will pay for the damage. Bell said she has minimum coverage, so her insurance company paid for the damage to the other driver's SUV, but not for her 1998 Ford Escort. She had to pay roughly $2,000 to fix her car, she said. She wrote a registered letter to Witkowski on Sept. 8 to voice her dissatisfaction with the way the accident was investigated. Bell is black, and the other driver is white, and Bell suggested racism might have been at play. "My concern," she wrote to Witkowski, "is that this police officer determined who was at fault in this accident by the color of a person's skin. That is sad and very scary." Racism had nothing to do with it, Witkowski said. "I've never had any racial complaints on him (Thompson) whatsoever," the chief said. Whenever he receives a complaint about an officer, Witkowski said, he hands it to the officer's immediate supervisor for an investigation. Bell's complaint went through the normal chain of command, he said, and Thompson presented documentation to support his reporting of the accident. It was enough to satisfy the chief that everything had been done properly. But it left Bell fuming. She said she doesn't know how the chief can think he investigated the discrepancies when nobody contacted her to talk to her. "How come they didn't talk to me?" she asked. "How come I was never responded to when I wrote the letter?" She said she used to work in law enforcement at the Cass County Jail, although she is retired now. Her father also was a law enforcement officer, and her brother still is. She thinks the way her accident was investigated is an example of officers closing ranks around a fellow cop instead of trying to learn the truth. Nancy J. Sulok's columns appear on Sundays, Mondays and Thursdays. You can reach her at nsulok@sbtinfo.com, or by writing c/o South Bend Tribune, 225 W. Colfax Ave., South Bend, IN 46626, telephone (574) 235-6234.Nancy J. Sulok Commentary Nancy J. Sulok is a Tribune columnist.